Category Archives: work

How not to end a business connection

We’ve all been jilted at the office. By that, I mean we’ve had to face the end of a business relationship. Sometimes it’s done well, other times poorly.

ghosting

The worst kind of ending is ghosting, where a client or customer goes silent, not contacting you or returning calls or emails.

In dating, when your current love becomes an ex, the effect can be brutal, tolerable, or even welcome, depending on the state of the relationship.

NOT JUST INCOME

In business, the pain can depend on how long you worked together. If that was years, the effect can be devastating. We’re not just talking about the end of an income – though of course that matters.

Ghosting creates a feeling that the good bond you thought existed is of little value to the client, who doesn’t care if you drop out of their life forever.

This surely isn’t the right way. All business tie-ups end sooner or later, but the finish deserves a full explanation to the other party, preferably face-to-face, no matter how uncomfortable this process may be.

Ghosting should be something that went the way of the black and white television.

Photo by Stefano Pollio

Where did it all go?

Most of us have heard of the resources curse. The notion is that countries blessed with natural resources don’t end up doing as well as those that start out with nothing. Think Venezuela with all its oil, versus Japan, possessing few natural advantages.

The concept can apply equally as well to people.

Those endowed with gifts sometimes cruise along, not as diligent as others, and often accomplishing less with their lives.

GIFTS GONE

Having never worked for their blessings, these people may not know where these came from. Consequently, they don’t know how to protect them or reclaim the gifts when gone. 

Possible types of bestowed advantages include sporting talent, family money, social connections, educational opportunities, good looks and intelligence.

Big achievers often come from behind, spurred on by an acute awareness of what’s lacking in their lives. They get enormous satisfaction from filling this deficit.

The “lucky ones”, meanwhile, sit back and wonder where on earth it all went. 

It’s not how you start out that matters, it’s what you become.

At some stage, you have to clean engines

Do what you love, we’re told, and it won’t even feel like work. Sounds good, yet the truth is that you’re not going to embrace everything about a job.

A friend recently announced that she was giving up writing fiction, because she didn’t enjoy the process enough. Other people, she said, loved creating novels. She realized that she didn’t.

Hold on, what didn’t she like?

LEARNED COMPETENCE

Fiction writing has a number of components, including plotting, crafting sentences, writing dialogue, and editing the raw drafts. A bunch of skills are required.

Some people are natural story tellers. They get carried along by the power of their tale and can hammer out a first draft in weeks, though the prose may be unexceptional in quality.

Other folk love crafting sentences and paragraphs, while having trouble shaping the whole thing into a coherent narrative.

The tasks you don’t like doing can be a grind, but they’re part of the skill-set. You learn to be competent at those aspects that don’t come naturally or easily.

This is why any profession or trade is a love-hate affair. You can delegate or contract out stuff you really don’t want to do, but some of it can’t be avoided. It’s difficult to be a mechanic who refuses to clean engines, or a general practitioner who won’t talk to patients.

Too bad about my writer friend. You can’t love it all.